More on Focused Freewriting

One of my lists of Focused Freewriting Questions

As I already discussed in The Amazing Benefits of Freewriting, practicing freewriting on a daily basis can open up writing in a wondrous way. This happens in the best way possible when freewriting is focused on a specific topic or question. The topic or question can be anything that you chose, but the more specific the question the better. Having a broad topic to work on can be more confusing than helpful, but allowing freedom to explore inside a narrowed topic or question allows for discovery that might be surprising and quite enlightening. Here's how I do it...

The Amazing Benefits of Freewriting

There are many tools in a writer's toolbox, but none is as helpful as the simple practice of freewriting. It's something that I picked up in my writing journey, which I used- but never fully appreciated- until I learned how powerful it could really be. This happened after reading the book How to Be a Writer by Barbara Baig. Nearly all her exercises, in the 265 page book, uses different variations of simple freewrite and focused freewriting. After doing several of the exercises, I found that all the freewriting I’d done up to that point was really just a warm-up. I never took it to the next level, because I hadn’t realized I wasn’t doing freewriting nearly enough (it should be done everyday), or even asking the right questions to do focused freewriting.

Taking a Break for Practice and Rediscovery

After a lot of thought and consideration, I have decided to halt my regular writing projects and deadlines to take a step back and reflect on my writing and writing practices. I have felt for some time a disconnect from my writing (and life in general) and need to get back in touch with these things. I have rediscovered an old technique of free writing and am taking it to the extreme by only doing free writing for the next few weeks until I have worked through some underlying issues and found solid ground to work from again.